Case Material and Role Play in Counselling Training

Susan Lendrum, Janet Tolan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415102155
• eBook ISBN: 9781134852635
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

First published in 1995. Between them, Janet Tolan and Susan Lendrum have nearly thirty years of experiences as counselling trainers. They have worked as practitioners in fields as diverse as voluntary telephone counselling, personnel work in industry, primary health care and local government.
Following the recent rapid rise in counselling training, Case Material and Role Play in Counselling Training is the long awaited answer to the demand for an accessible and practical guide for trainers and educators in counselling skills, therapeutic counsellors and psychotherapists. It offers help to those designing a course and to those wondering how to enliven their training sessions.
Part one describes how case materials and role play can form part of an overall training programme, and offers step-by-step instructions on how to use or adapt them. Part two comprises over 250 case vignettes and role plays and is further divided into two sections. The first covers core relationship skills such as beginnings and endings, empathy and ethical issues. The second covers practice issues such as loss and bereavement, sexuality and depression. Part two is cross-referenced so that readers looking for particular materials can select them according to: the work setting of their client group; the age of their client group; the stage of the relationship; or the focus of counselling.

PART I
Using the materials

INTRODUCTION

ABOUT THE METHODS

The value of case material and role play lies in their capacity to stimulate the imagination and enable course members to engage with people’s concerns and complexities within the supportive environment of the course. In this way, course members are able to develop the understanding and skills of counselling and prepare themselves to work effectively with their future clients.

There are many challenges for course members in experiential work. If they are used to a more cognitive way of working, they may feel very uncertain and vulnerable about having the spotlight upon their feelings and behaviour. Role play highlights the differences between how people think they are communicating and how their communication is perceived by others, and when course members recognise the potential for learning in this method they begin to demand more.

Case study and role play methods can be as exciting and challenging for the trainer as for the learner. They often evoke the unexpected, since course members use their own experiences and imagination in working with them. As tutors, we need to draw fully upon our own skills and understanding to make this wealth of material useful to a training group.

Unlike many other areas of education and training, relationship work is centrally concerned with ourselves. We are not dealing with tools or machines, with manipulating figures or words on the page. There is nothing to provide distance, either between course members and their clients or between tutors and course members. The developments which people seek from counselling arise from the relationship between counsellor and client. Similarly, the development of course members arises in large part from the relationship between themselves and course tutors. Quite frankly, this level of engagement can be exhausting. We have worked with course members who, at different stages, revere us, batter us, love us, hate us, are frightened of us, are angry with us, support us, challenge us. It is the most stimulating, frustrating, rewarding work we know.

As trainers, our purpose is not to develop ‘nice’ people, ‘mature’ people or ‘more rounded’ people (although this might be one outcome of the training), but to develop practitioners – people who can use their insights, awareness and perceptions in a skilled way to benefit others. This is why experiential teaching/ learning methods are essential and why we have chosen to focus on case material and role play in this book.

Using these methods, however, is considerably less ‘safe’ than using more didactic methods. Course tutors are most effective when they model those skills and attributes which they are advocating for course members. It is important for us to demonstrate empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard; to support and challenge course members and each other. We cannot hide behind theory or misuse the power we have as tutors to cover our own vulnerabilities – however tempting this may be at times. We have learned that course members are more than willing to forgive us our mistakes – and learn from them – if we acknowledge them openly. For example, ‘Perhaps I expressed that clumsily. I’m sorry. How could I have said it better?’

We have found that there are many temptations for us as trainers. Being a guru, for example: it can be so seductive to have course members at our (metaphorical) feet, telling us how wonderful we are and how they will never be able to do it like that – so much for empowerment!

Wanting to be loved is another: it is tempting not to challenge course members, for when we do so, however respectfully, they can get cross, or feel aggrieved, or get upset, or even leave the course. As if this were not risky enough of itself, other course members can get protective of their peers and start accusing us too.

Being the fount of all wisdom is a third temptation; hiding behind a convenient bit of jargon is, after all, much less scary than admitting we don’t know. And it is also tempting to blame the slowness or resistance of course members rather than face discomfort in ourselves.

So how do we avoid these and other such traps? A co-tutor who will support us and our course members when we risk being real and open – and challenge us when we don’t – will help us not to fall into the traps in the first place. And a training supervisor who will help us first to recognise the traps we are in and, second, to find our way out, is also beyond price.

ABOUT OURSELVES

We first met when we were both asked to develop a validation scheme for counselling training in the North-West and, once the scheme was in operation, to put on a ‘Training for Trainers’ course. In planning for this course, we discovered that each of us found role play and case materials extraordinarily effective in all kinds of relationship training, whether for voluntary bereavement counsellors, psychotherapists, people managers or counselling supervisors. We also discovered that we had developed our own materials and ways of using them and realised that no text existed which detailed this kind of experience. Neither, as far as we are aware, is there a book which offers material which can be used across the full range of training.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book is intended, first, to help beginning trainers to use case studies and role plays in their work; second, to help experienced trainers to expand their repertoire of training methods; and third, and perhaps most importantly, to provide a range of material which can be used and adapted for relationship training at all levels.

Part I of this book covers the rationale and general principles of using case discussion and role play methods and gives detailed notes on how to use them in training programmes and how to adapt them to different contexts and levels. Part II contains over 250 case and role play materials, structured for easy access, together with practical tips for trainers.

Case study and role play methods are appropriate to a wide range of training activities: listening and interpersonal skills training; counselling skills training; counselling and psychotherapy training. To avoid repetition we often use the term ‘relationship training’ to cover all of these. Similarly, the terms for the two main roles, ‘counsellor’ and ‘client’ are used over a wide range of practice. We expect that readers will change the terms, using ‘listener’ or ‘therapist’, say, if more appropriate to their own training group.

Throughout this book we have decided to use the personal pronouns ‘he’ for course members and ‘she’ for trainers, rather than the cumbersome ‘she or he’ or an ungrammatical ‘they’.

ABOUT YOU

Whatever your involvement in training, we hope that you will find this book stimulating and useful.

1
WHY USE CASE MATERIALS AND ROLE PLAY IN COUNSELLING TRAINING?

RATIONALE

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the oe’r-fraught heart, and bids it break.

Macbeth, IV, iii

These words of Shakespeare are often quoted in the context of counselling because they so aptly express, even today, the value of putting deepest feelings into words, especially when those words can be heard and accepted by another person. Shakespeare also warns of the unhappy consequences, such as the sense of a broken heart, when feelings are not openly expressed. We could describe Macduff’s situation as follows:

Macduff is a Scottish Lord whose castle has been attacked in his absence and his wife and young children slaughtered by the agents of a certain Macbeth who fears being replaced one day by Macduff’s son. Macduff is a man of action who could easily respond without being fully aware of the feelings which motivate him. He might rush out to tackle Macbeth without forethought, thus putting his and others’ lives in danger. His old friend Malcolm knows how important it is for him to put his shock, pain and sorrow into words.

Or as a latter-day case vignette as follows:

Mr Macduff is a wealthy man whose wife and children have just been killed in a road traffic accident where a drunken driver crossed the central reservation and ploughed into the oncoming traffic. Macduff is a man of action who could easily respond without being fully aware of the feelings which motivate him. He might rush out to the scene of the accident, or to find the drunken driver, without forethought, thus putting his and others’ lives in danger. His old friend Malcolm knows how important it is for him to put his shock, pain and sorrow into words.

Further, we could let readers enter more intensely into the feelings of this experience through offering two role plays as follows:

Mr Macduff

You are a 35-year-old man whose wife and children have just been killed in a horrific road traffic accident. You cannot believe that anyone could be that drunkenly crazy or that this could have happened to you...

Mr Malcolm

You were with your old friend Macduff when his brother-in-law Ross arrived to tell him that his wife and children had just been killed in an accident. You know that Macduff could easily rush out into action rather than expressing his feelings more directly. You know that it is important for him to put his shock, pain and sorrow into words ...

How can counsellors learn to respond appropriately to Macduff? And how can we, as trainers, help counsellors to respond to Macduff? As counsellors, we face the simple but difficult task of being respectful, congruent and empathic towards Macduff. As trainers, we face the double task of being respectful, congruent and empathic to the trainee counsellor, while also ensuring that he or she learns most effectively how to be with and respond to Macduff.

By first of all considering Macduff’s tragedy as a case vignette and then by entering it more intensely as a role play, we can be more in touch with what is really happening for Macduff and we are in a more powerful position to practise responding to him in words.

Counsellors need to learn how to enable others to put their feelings into words. We, as trainers, need to find ways of helping counsellors to enter the feeling world of another and to respond appropriately to that other. These familiar lines from Macbeth can perhaps highlight the value of case studies and role plays. Courses would usually start with less dramatic materials. Nevertheless there remains the twofold training task of enabling learners: (i) to enter into the feeling world of another person and (ii) to practise responding to that person in distress, in other words, to respond empathically.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EMPATHY

The development of empathic responding is fundamental to both the theory and practice of relationship training. Empathy involves, first, perceiving the feeling experience of another person and, second, communicating to that person an understanding of the experience. In order to arrive at the point where they are able to begin empathising with others, course members must tackle several strands of learning at the same time, each strand interwoven with and complementing the others.

The first strand is that of becoming aware of their own feelings. We live in a society which tends to value the cognitive, rational and intellectual more highly than the affective, feeling and emotional. In fact, ‘Don’t get emotional about it’ is often a severe reproof, particularly if directed at a man. ‘Emotional’ in this sense often has undertones of childishness and loss of control. It is not surprising, then, that many people believe that their own feelings and emotions are, at best, a weakness and, at worst, shameful. They have learned to repress, distort or ignore them. As awareness of their own feelings is low, so, too is awareness of others’ feelings.

The second strand of learning is for trainees to re-tune to the signals which indicate emotions in others; posture, facial expression and tone of voice, as well as the words spoken.

A third strand is learning to accept their own and others’ feelings – to discover that there are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ feelings, only natural responses which can be understood if the context is known (and, moreover, that repression and distortion can be understood in contex...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PART I: USING THE MATERIALS
• PART II: THE RESOURCES